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"Tie her to a tree and keep going."
I stared at her.
"I hope you're not serious," Daniel said.
"How about we tie you to a tree?" Corey said.
"It's a dog," Sam said. "I understand it's Maya's pet--"
"No, you don't understand," I said, barely able to get the words out. "I wouldn't tie any animal to a tree and leave it to die. Any animal. And certainly not my dog. She trusts me to look after her. I will not break that trust."
"I'm not saying we tie her and leave her for good. If she's tagged, they'll find her. If not, we can come back after--"
"After she's died of dehydration? Or been eaten by the first hungry cougar or bear that comes along and finds dinner staked out for it?"
Sam backed up and crossed her arms. "This isn't about doing what we want. It's doing what we need to survive. You think you're the only one who's had to make hard choices?"
"We just made a hard choice," Corey said. "We left Hayley--"
"There's a reason I don't have pets," Sam went on. "I found a kitten once. I took it from place to place as we ran ... until the day we had to run without going back home. My parents said she'd find a way out of our apartment. I'm not sure of that. But there was nothing else to do. Hard life. Hard choices."
My parents would have made sure the cat got out, called a neighbor from a pay phone or something. As I looked at Sam, though, I knew she wouldn't agree. She'd been raised to avoid risk at all costs.
"Sam has a point," I said.
"What?" Corey said. "No way."
Daniel shot me a questioning look. Not questioning why I was going along with Sam, but wondering what alternative I had in mind, because he knew there was no way in hell I'd leave Kenjii behind.
"She could be tagged," I said. "And as we agreed earlier, not all of us need to get to safety. That means not all of us need to stay with Kenjii. I'll take her. You guys go another way."
Once again, our great escape devolved into chaos, which could be summarized as: "You can't do that." "Yes, I can." "I know you're upset--" "I'm not upset. We have a problem and I'm solving it." Expand. Mix. Repeat until one party wears down and surrenders. That party wasn't me.
Actually, I was surprised by how quickly Daniel gave in. Well, "quickly" being relative. But he did fold fast enough for me to suspect he didn't plan to actually let me go off alone. So I kept my ears tuned for signs I was being followed. But I didn't hear any. He'd realized this was the best solution for all.
I'd sent Daniel along the road, which seemed to be slowly veering inland. I stuck to a direct route south, through the woods. Soon I found an even narrower dirt road.
It was dusk when I came across a couple of cottages. They were little more than shacks. Both uninhabited. One was completely empty. The other had furniture. So I broke in and, no, I didn't feel guilty about that. Couldn't.
As I discovered, though, the only thing in that cabin was the furniture. No phone. No canned food. I had pop and energy bars from the store, though, so I decided to eat them at the table, which felt oddly comforting. I shared with Kenjii, as I'd done with all my rations.
By the time I finished eating, night had fallen. I considered spending it on the double bed. It was just a bare mattress--a stained and soiled one--but my muscles ached from sleeping on the cold ground, and I'd be better able to escape pursuers with a decent sleep. So I gingerly stretched out, using Kenjii as a pillow.
As everything got quiet, there was only one thing left to do. Think about what happened at the store today. Think about what that man said.
Calvin Antone. My father. I hated the sound of that. Even "biological father" wasn't much better. As for "bio father," I'd never used the term, even in my mind. Probably because I never thought about the man who'd fathered me.
I did think about the woman who'd given birth to me. I couldn't help it. She'd abandoned me. Now, I'd learned that I had a twin brother, and she'd kept him. It didn't matter if Rafe was right and she'd split us up for our own safety. She'd still chosen which child she wanted to keep, and there had to be a reason--maybe I cried more, maybe I fussed more, maybe she decided she'd rather have a son--but some thought process must have gone into it. She'd chosen him and rejected me.
I flipped onto my stomach and made a noise in my throat that sounded a lot like a growl.
I didn't want to feel anything toward my biological parents, positive or negative. I remember once my mom showed me an online forum for adopted kids. If I wouldn't share my angst with her and I wouldn't share it with a counselor, maybe I'd be comfortable with this. What she couldn't seem to understand was that I had no angst. On those forums I saw kids bitching about their adoptive parents and how much better their biological ones might have been, and I realized I had nothing in common with them.
I was sure there were others like me--who wouldn't trade their adoptive parents for anything--but those kids were doing fine, living their lives, just like me. They weren't complaining on Internet forums.
Now I had angst. Not only had my biological mother rejected me, but Rafe also said she had light hair and hazel eyes, even if she had to be at least part-Native because of the skin-walker blood. I'd grown up thinking I was one-hundred-percent Native, and finding out I wasn't threw me off balance.
Then I'd met my biological father and he wasn't just the sperm donor I'd imagined. Apparently, he was the parent who hadn't rejected me. He said he'd been searching for me since I'd been born. Then he found me, and he'd been there ever since, somewhere, watching me grow up.
